Is Unreal Engine the Future of Filmmaking?

[Music] the shots we just showed you are gorgeous of course but the most impressive thing about what you just watched is that it was all rendered in real time all of the images we just showed you were made using unreal engine created by the incredible artist andrew svonberg hamilton i put a link to the full video below it is definitely worth a watch but this is insane for a few reasons one those aren't real all of those shots were cg two they were rendered in real time meaning the images you just saw could be explored and adjusted in real time at that level just like you would in an actual environment and three all of that is done inside of software that is free for you to use right now so as the title of this episode says this is the future of filmmaking i partnered with epic games for this episode but 3d is something that i've been diving into for the last seven or eight months i started in more traditional software but started making my way into unreal engine as well not long after that so i'm still new to this software only about six months into it and i come at it as more of a director than anything else but it's that factor that has made this thing so incredibly valuable to me and that is what i want to look at today what it is how i've been using it and why it is without a doubt the future of filmmaking unreal engine is a game engine developed by epic games with some incredible games being created on it but very quickly this platform extended out to other industries like film and television with the most famous use recently being the led wall technology that was used to create virtual environments for the mandalorian series and what makes unreal engine so incredible is that it is real time real time graphics real-time keying and compositing real-time camera tracking for virtual cameras and again like i showed earlier with photo realistic results what makes it even more exciting is that this is all developing technology epic games is working with massive productions creating solutions for problems and advancing the software rapidly then they take all that advancement and they put it in the software and make it available to all of us for free then you have mega scans and the whole unreal engine marketplace there are tons of feature level assets there to be used again for free and i'll get into more of those assets in a minute the last thing i do want to point out before i jump into how i use this software is the new meta-human creator these are insanely high quality digital humans that you can customize then send to your project which are very useful for look depth which is a bigger aspect of how i'm using it right now yes this is 3d software to create cinematic animations landscapes and virtual productions with but it's also an insanely powerful tool for directors like myself first is the most obvious use and that is storyboards and animatics i know that using something like unreal engine for something as simple as a storyboard seems like a bit of a sledgehammer on attack sort of situation but it's the details that i think makes it so valuable i'm not a 3d artist i toy around a little bit but i'm not super proficient in that world but with the marketplace and mega scans i'm able to buy or build out scenes that match my vision pretty easily and this gives you complete freedom i'm not locked to anything i can change literally anything and get this as close to that vision of the moment as possible i'm also building out a 3d world that i can move around in and try things in think of ways to play this moment i wouldn't have otherwise and if you're a newer filmmaker this is a great way to practice scene construction without needing a cast crew location or budget then i could take this even further into animatics after just a few days of messing around with the software and figuring it out i was able to make a very simple animatic for an idea that i've been working on this sort of opening to this series idea i have [Music] [Music] of course this little moment isn't perfect but in just an hour i was able to test out an idea with tone to see what was working and show collaborators but without being in production on anything yet what i've been using this for the most is development while building out a project to pitch you'll often create visual decks to convey the look of the film and a rip reel which is basically a fake trailer that you make from clips of other films to give a sense of the film you do want to make but it's often tough to find the right thing and it often bothers me that it's someone else's work that i'm using which i showed a few weeks ago how you can alter images in photoshop to get close but here you can create custom moments to really land your concept for instance i'm building a pitch that i'm co-writing with some amazing writers and though the rip rail will have some clips from existing films i'm using unreal engine to create some custom shots to really focus in on our concept like this shot here which will be the opening shot of the ripped reel this isn't the finished shot of course i had to remove some elements for obvious reasons but i was able to get this bathroom set from the marketplace and build out a scene that is pivotal to our concept so this moment with some voice over we'll start our rip reel giving us a way to stand out from other pitches but also convey our idea that much more but let's take a walk through here first if i want i could grab a built out scene like this one here open it up and i have this pre-built world that i can dive right into and start working of course you can adjust and customize here just using this as a pre-built set essentially so i can change my lighting time of day and so on all the obvious things then there's also qxel mega scans which partnered with unreal engine to make all of their assets completely free for unreal users and mega scans are high resolution scans of real world objects turning them into photo real 3d assets for you to drag and drop we could take a look at their library here in bridge just absolutely loaded with so many useful assets so i can download what i need then send it to unreal and place them however i want with unreal engine 5 bridge is built right into unreal so you can literally drag and drop the assets right onto the viewport and all of this is utilizing the new nanite inside of unreal engine 5. so all of this is feature level quality detail now i'm not going to get into what nanite is here i'll add some links below that dive into that but nanite and another feature called lumen really are next level stuff so definitely check that out but i'm dragging and dropping mega scans assets and using assets from the unreal engine 5 demo to quickly build out a virtual set or location and i'm just taking these pieces and kit bashing smashing things together like lego pieces rotating duplicating and so on until i get a look that i like and i'm just building out a sort of desert look here to keep it simple for this and i'm just gonna like this with the sun and sky system but you can of course drop in lights here you can even bounce lights off things if you wanted and of course we have our camera here which we can specify our settings with a wide screen look shallow depth of field change our camera type and focal length and over here you can organize all your assets like you would in an editing project panel and speaking of editing you can actually build out your shots and animations right here and then play them back in real time but you can also have the option to export your shots for even higher quality but the export time is still really fast especially compared to other 3d software and it's an actual editor as you build out your shots in unreal you can edit them as well add music sound effects the whole thing you could literally do everything right inside of this software if you wanted and go nowhere else now i haven't really gotten into that side of it yet so i won't go further with that but it's definitely something that i will be getting into and like i said i'm still new still figuring all of this out so if you want to dive in there are a ton of amazing tutorials that have really helped me crack into it i'll put a bunch of those in the notes below for you guys so you can see now why i am saying this is the future of filmmaking and i'm not the only one everyone that i know that has touched this thing or knows enough about it says the exact same thing and i'm not just talking about big budget mandalorian style filmmaking i'm talking about everything from low budget film to the top tier with applications for everything from pre-production to post-production and for independent filmmakers or filmmakers just starting out it's going to become more and more of a tool to disrupt how things are done i didn't even get into so many of the other amazing things that you could do like face capture using your iphone or turning your iphone into a controller to do digital camera moves i haven't gotten that far yet but those are things that i'm getting into soon and will definitely show in later episodes once we get those tests up and going and honestly there is a bit of a learning curve it took me about a month to really fully wrap my head around it enough to be able to start building things out the way i wanted but once you do get a handle on it you have access to all these free assets and a massive marketplace of more cheap or free assets all to build out whatever you have in your head and start creating like you really couldn't before what i love most about this software is it opens up a world for all of us that's only limited by our imagination and our willingness to learn and try new things which again is why this is the future of filmmaking so check out the notes below for more of those tutorials i was talking about and more on unreal engine including where to go to download and get started and if you are not subscribed consider doing that and hit the bell so you're notified when we put out new content until next time don't forget to write shoot edit repeat [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Film Riot

Views: 197,938

Rating: 4.9521441 out of 5

Keywords: film riot, triune films, ryan connolly, filmmaking, tutorial, how to, adobe, film school, unreal engine, unreal engine 5, unreal engine 4, ue4, ue5, epic games, virtual production, led wall, mandalorian, animatics, story board, pre-production, production, post production, future of filmmaking, cg, cgi

Id: M-AV-bctI1o

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021